Compressed Data; Ice-T's Take on Napster, The Law and Morality

At an industry conference in Los Angeles last Tuesday, the rapper Ice-T, a self-described ''conspiracy theorist type of guy,'' shared his views on the recording industry and the Napster controversy.

''Records are free when on the radio, right?'' Ice-T said. The recording companies, ''are tripping off the fact this stuff comes through the computer clean,'' he said. ''That's the thing. When it comes on the radio, you can tape it, I can send it to my homeboy. But mail moves slow and the Internet moves faster.''

Most of Ice-T's comments had his audience of about 400 people roaring with laughter. The gathering was the Herring on Hollywood 2000 conference, sponsored by The Red Herring, a business magazine.

''What the majors do is they go into gangster techniques,'' Ice-T said, referring to the major recording labels. ''Napster will resurface in one of these major record companies as a way to share files. Once they figure out how to take the technology and get paid off of it.''

Napster, of course, is the service that lets people swap music files over the Internet, often with little regard to copyrights. The Recording Industry Association of America is suing Napster in federal court in San Francisco.

The rapper also commented on musicians, including the rapper Dr. Dre and the band Metallica, suing Napster. ''Some lawyer wakes me up and says, 'Man, we can get a couple of million dollars.' And I'm like, 'Sue whoever you gotta sue. Who is Napster? What do they do?' '' Ice-T said suing is for lawyers, not artists.

Why do so many people traffic in music they haven't paid for? ''To me,'' Ice-T said, ''you got the cops and the robbers. And, to me, I think human beings are naturally robbers. I think human beings want it free. And that's just your nature. And, if there is a way around paying, that is what you are going to do. None of you guys are moral enough to say I would rather pay $16 than get it free.'' LAURA M. HOLSON